Rogues

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is behaving like the rogue state that it is.

At the United Nations, the DPRK delegation requested to participate in Security Council deliberations over nuclear tests that Pyongyang itself announced. When they were displeased with the drift of the deliberations, the DPRK delegation walked out of the hall.

The Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the nuclear tests in North Korea and imposing sanctions on the misbehaving state. The resolution was unanimously approved – indicating the global consensus regarding the antics of that bizarre regime in Pyongyang.

The nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang is not the first time this regime scandalized the world.

In the seventies, North Korean agents kidnapped Japanese civilians to be used to train their spies. Many of those kidnapped have yet to be accounted for. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, in a bizarre moment, confessed to the program of kidnapping during a visit by Japanese officials.

In the eighties, American and Spanish navy ships intercepted North Korean cargo vessels in the Indian Ocean. They found scud missiles intended for sale in Yemen.

North Korean ship have likewise been found to be transporting heroin and meta amphetamines (known here as "shabu") through the commercial sea routes of the South China sea and beyond. Apart from banned substances, North Korea likewise "exports" fake pharmaceuticals (including rip-offs of the erectile drug Viagra) and counterfeit products of every variety. These things are being produced by North Korea to raise hard currencies to keep its economy afloat.

If they are engaged in the drugs trade, North Korea should also be engaged in the illicit arms trade. Japanese authorities strongly suspect close links between North Korea and the Yakuza criminal syndicates.

It is no secret that local communist insurgents, having been dropped by China, are looking to North Korea as their last great red hope for logistical support. Little wonder that Ka Roger, NPA spokesman, was the only voice shameless enough to endorse Pyongyang’s nuclear test.

This is nothing new. We will recall that the Maoist KMU led by Crispin Beltran was the only group that praised Beijing in the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre. At that time, this communist labor front relied on subsidies from the Communist Party of China to support their operations.

The past few years, the new Mecca of local Maoists has been Pyongyang. They embark on junkets to this hermit kingdom of Kim Jong-il and come home publicly gushing about how well North Korea’s primary schools are run. They were, apparently, not shown the real face of massive starvation characterizing this country.

There is great affinity between the DPRK and the CPP-NPA. They are both desperately clinging to a bankrupt ideology, using criminality as the final means to subsist.

The past few days, the NPA figured in the news once more. They bombed the Silay airport construction site and torched two other Globe cell sites, destroying millions worth of property. As usual, the insane violence was done to enforce extortion demands.

In Masbate, there are several promising projects that could have improved the wellbeing of inhabitants of this island, suffering since the collapse of our coconut industry years ago. There are several enterprises using coconut as "eco-fiber" for export to China, otherwise zero value coconut husks are compressed into bricks called "happy soil" excellent for use in potted plants with a large Japanese market, virgin coconut oil now enjoys roust demand and a biomass generating plant using waste material from coconut could power the island and open the way for more industries.

All of these are now on hold because of NPA extortion. Thousands of jobs have been denied the people of this promising island.

This movement thrives on keeping people poor. In the same way, the Kim Jong-il regime can only survive by keeping its society hermetically sealed from the realities of the modern world.

Japan has unilaterally banned North Korean ships from its ports in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear tests. Most North Korean ships docking in Japan import luxury items such as fine French wines, for the consumption of Kim Jong-il and his cronies.

Russia and China have signed on to the UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on the DPRK. What they will do exactly we will know in the next few days.

Pyongyang relies on peddling its workers, in virtual slavery to the state, to work for Russian firms in the inhospitable climate of Sakhalin island. North Korea relies on China for 90 percent of its fuel and 80 percent of its food.

Of all the members of the Security Council, China is the most cautious in its approach to sanctions against North Korea. This is not because Beijing has much fondness for the insane regime in Pyongyang. China knows only too well that North Korea relies on a very thin thread for its subsistence. A North Korean collapse could send a flood of refugees across the border into China.

North Korea is a basket case that could very well turn into a radioactive trash heap. It depends on the Red Cross for desperately needed humanitarian aid – which could be cut if both Japan and South Korea close their ports to ships transiting to the north. Hyundai, which opened plants in the north as a goodwill gesture, is now under intense pressure from the South Korean public to close those operations.

Otherwise, the regional market is only marginally affected by the tensions that have built up since the nuclear tests.

This is because North Korea might as well be in another planet. It does not constitute a market of any note for the productive economies of the region. It has no capital and does not trade in any meaningful way.

It is simply a nuisance in the region. A very expensive nuisance now because it threatens the productive economies around it with nuclear distress.

Perhaps Ka Roger should consider retiring in this rotting paradise and inhale radioactive fumes from the test site, fumes that are now wafting into the Pacific. That is the only positive thing he can do for his own people.